Many companies have been making sheds and portable outdoor buildings for decades and selling to the public, typically buyers for placement in either rural or suburban settings. A portable outdoor building may be embodied and used as a storage shed, garden shed, garage, playhouse, or gazebo.
The term “shed” is used throughout herein to be equivalent with any of the aforementioned embodiments of portable buildings and other similar embodiments that could benefit from having an offloading and onloading system that increases the ease, safety, minimal damage, and time associated with offloading or onloading a portable shed.
To initially load a shed onto an exemplary open bed trailer or to remove a shed first requires a loading or “onloading” operation or procedure which may be met with many potential challenges from terrain and environmental conditions.
After the acquired shed has loaded or “onloaded,” it is delivered to a customer site for unloading or “offloading” and installation. Once the shed has arrived at a customer site, offloading from the exemplary open bed trailer also offers many potential challenges from terrain and environment.
An onloading and offloading (“load management”) system may also be useful for other embodiments somewhat dissimilar to portable buildings including for example, a piece of industrial equipment or skid.
Hereinafter, the use of the term “load management system” is synonymous and equivalent to “loading/unloading”, “onloading/offloading”, “loading and unloading”, and “onloading and offloading” system, device, apparatus, mechanisms, and machine contexts and associated functional terminologies.
An offloading or unloading site is frequently in rugged terrain or in a backyard setting, neither of which are likely to have a drive way, lane, street, highway, path, or road leading to the exact spot for unloading. In many cases the shed or equipment deliverable is best unloaded transversely relative to the longitudinal direction and orientation of the trailer. Also, in many cases, the shed or equipment must be offloaded at a significant distance from the trailer's closest accessible location using normal vehicular means. The pathway from the closest accessible location using normal vehicular means to the final resting placement or offloading site is many times over “hostile terrain” that may be any combination of slick, muddy, soft, wet, rugged, rocky, cragged, uneven, unlevel, jagged, irregular, rough, and steep.
The hostile terrain issues can be a factor in both onloading and offloading circumstances and locations with regard to safe, reliable, and efficient operations. For example, there may be a need to repossess the exemplary shed for lack of payment.
Effective onloading or offloading with ease, safety, minimal damage, and efficient management of time can be provided by a well-designed load management system incorporated into or mounted onto the hauling vehicle; for example the load management system may be preferably mounted on the bottom side of an open bed trailer. The operation of an effective load management system incorporated into a trailer or hauling platform may be performed by an operator by simply pressing buttons and switches that control the load management system operations.
An exemplary shed load management system is best located underneath and mechanically attached to the frame of the shed trailer. The exemplary load management system for a shed is sized and mounted to the underbelly of the shed trailer in such a way that it does not normally interfere with the motion of the trailer during hauling and transport followed by pre-positioning of the shed to the final setup destination. During such a transport, the load management system remains (preferably locked) in a retracted low profile position under the trailer in order to minimize the effective size and maximize road clearance, otherwise the load management system is subject to damage incurred by striking an object or raised section of the drive way, lane, street, highway, path, or road leading to the exact spot for unloading.
For a shed load management system to be effective, it must have several mechanical actions and functions available for activation by a system operator. There must be an operator interface (switch box/control unit) for the operator to use to activate and preferably to monitor the progress and status various load management system actions and states.
For a load management system to be most effective and useful it must be able to extend downward (engage) and lift the entire weight of the loaded trailer upward by pressing the assembly (preferably through mobilizing tracks) against the ground until the trailer wheels no longer are in contact with the ground.
Once an exemplary shed trailer is lifted by the offloading system tracks, the load management system establishes motion control capability of the shed trailer. Once the load management system as achieved motion control capability, it can be operated to move the shed trailer transversely along with several other movement actions and degrees of freedom such as load levelling, tilting, and setting an optimal offload orientation of the exemplary shed trailer.
The load management system preferably includes several mechanical members to affect the aforementioned motion control and associated movements that directly control the exemplary shed trailer movements.
Historically unloading or offloading systems have used wheels with tires to attempt lift and motion control and other associated movements. However, wheel/tire based systems are problematic and result in increased difficulties and challenges to both onloading and offloading operations. Increased difficulties and challenges include increased onloading and offloading time, inability to unload at the desired spot, damage to the shed during onloading or offloading, and inability to maneuver and move the trailer transversely due to hostile terrain. Wheel/tire based loading or unloading systems are inherently unstable with inferior traction as compared to a continuous track based load management system. The loading or unloading site is often hostile terrain and may be wet, muddy, soft, or irregular causing the wheel/tire based loading or unloading system controlling the trailer to bog down, get stuck, or slide uncontrollably in a wrong direction.
Loading and unloading systems using wheels/tires are subject to tire damage including deflation or destruction of tires during a loading or unloading circumstance. What has been needed is a load management system with powered continuous tracks for durability as well as for traction in hostile terrain and load stability.
Due to the issues, difficulties, and challenges (“problems”) described herein and others there has been a long felt need for a shed trailer onloading/offloading system that is capable of overcoming and resolving these problems.